


I’ll take in stride, the consequences of falling

by harajukucrepes



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Adolescent Sexuality, Allusions to mental health issues, Fragmented Timeline, Kind of a Band!AU, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 11:40:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10411338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/harajukucrepes/pseuds/harajukucrepes
Summary: He wanted to ask to be touched, because in times like this intimacy would break him, and if he was broken enough, Otabek would finally see that he wasn’t ok. Stop having faith in me, stop idealising me, I’m not perfect.But Otabek would kiss him like he was the most wondrous thing to have happened to him, the most treasured, most beloved, and if there was one thing that would make him feel the worst he could humanly be is to be loved like that, because he would only want to lock this feeling, hide Otabek away and crush him underfoot if he could.He would bury his thoughts, destroy his voice, vanquish his own colours.





	

*  
I’ll take in stride, the consequences of falling

 

 

 

It’s the third time now, someone going off in smattering Japanese before noticing Otabek’s slightly confused expression, realising that he can’t really keep up. The lady behind the ticket counter, halfway through explaining that there have been some new express train services and that it has now passed the destination he’s supposed to be, pauses mid-sentence and tilts her head slightly, waiting to ascertain her guess. 

“Uhm,” he starts with a rehearsed line, “I’m alright, please continue.” He has never been good with speaking informally.The lady looks relieved, but she slows her speech down nonetheless. He bows to thank her for trying to accommodate, then returns to the ticketing machine to get a new one before heading to the platform, the feeling of familiarity sinking deeper. 

Some scenes of his past come to mind, like of those times when he would be walking with Yuri and nobody would be able to guess that Yuri was the one with the capability to speak Japanese, instead of him. 

“It must be the fact that you look local? You even look like some famous seiyuu, Mila was saying,” Yuri was saying. It was a few months later before Yuri bothered to look up for that seiyuu, only because Otabek kept drawing unnecessary attention whenever they had to stop by Akihabara. 

(It was this guy called Suzuki Tatsuhisa. Otabek thought he looked really cool. Yuri wasn’t too impressed.)

“It’s the thing with the people here, they more or less assumed that people who look like them would speak like them.” It was a no-brainer that Yuri got away with plenty, what’s with his long blonde hair and cold, icy green eyes, looking perfectly out of place. 

Thinking back, Otabek recalls that he has never heard a positive commentary about the Japanese society or culture from Yuri. It’s the thing about Yuri that Otabek had to learn to get used to—he never really had anything nice to say about anyone. The kindest words were usually used on either his grandfather, cats, inanimate objects, or vague concepts. Things like music for example, which Yuri would never run out of passion for. But for everything else, there were some sort of richness in the sting in Yuri’s words had that never failed to fascinate Otabek. 

Nevertheless it was Yuri’s passion that drew him in, the solitude in his songs and the otherworldliness of the singing voice and those convinced Otabek that Yuri has had one of the most delicate souls he has ever met. His high school English teacher once said that pain can never be fully translated into works of art, no matter how skillful the artist is, and so he could only imagine the depth of Yuri’s scar when he was writing for that album before their hiatus. 

The studio is, as far as he could remember, a 20-minute walk from the Shinjuku station. The quiet rush of the bustling Tokyo streets used to bother him, but Otabek grew to love Tokyo and all its silent, persistent values. It suited him far better than the brashness of New York, even if he never got to be fluent enough in Japanese to speak casually. 

“So this is like your soul-city,” Yuri once said, in one of his most spontaneous moments. “Great, you can stay here longer.” Except Otabek didn’t—he left Tokyo to return to Almaty, then New York, then Los Angeles and before he realised anything, ten full years before he could return. 

 

 

 

It was the moment he no longer could date or place in the sequence of events that happened: the memory of the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He couldn’t even remember how many kisses took them to this point, or if it was intended to lead to other things. Only that it _did_ happen, one rainy day in Kyoto during one of of their trips. 

It was one of those trips they took some time after Leopard Rain’s first album started to sell, about the time when Yuri had taken the habit of wearing lipsticks and putting on eye shadows whenever he had to go out. He was convinced that he would still be recognised without makeup, so if his face would have to stand out anyway, he would rather that it was because he was pretty darn convincing in looking like a random _gaijin_ woman. 

They had wanted to walk around somewhere when the pouring happened, so they had to retreat back into their lodging, and the memory started when Yuri exclaimed his annoyance in accidentally staining the face towel by wiping his face with makeup still on. 

Something about the sight of red colour at the side of Yuri’s lips drove him to stop right in front of Yuri and hold his face by the chin. There was water dripping from Yuri’s hair, shoulder-length at that time, and both their bodies were cold from the rain. But he did it anyway, pressing his lips against Yuri’s, forgetting his usual routine of asking Yuri if he wanted a kiss and pulling Yuri’s soaked body close to his, sensing the slow relaxation of the tension in his muscles, feeling him melt in his embrace. 

He took his time staying in the kiss, releasing enough to bask in the sight of the red now all over Yuri’s lips just to press again. He kissed hard enough to hear Yuri gasp and softened it after to hear him breathe, and later when he pushed him to the floor, he took in as much as he could before starting to using his own lips to leave stains on his body: 

The sight of the most beautiful kiss, and the breathtakingly beautiful boy who gave it to him. 

 

 

 

They almost didn’t meet that day. 

It was his third? fourth? time in Japan drumming for Peroxidical, one of those World Music Festivals that took place in Tokyo. The crowd was the largest he had ever played for, but evidently the rest of Peroxidical didn’t feel the same, especially JJ. 

“I couldn’t even see my uchiwas,” JJ whined. “Some Russian bugger just have to debut with a shiny new band and steal the thunder from my amazing return.”

“That Russian bugger just happened to be a world-famous pianist, so you might as well just get over it and warm up your vocal chords,” Seung Gil snapped at him. “If you crack your voice while singing, you’ll probably see your uchiwas going down, like literally.”

The atmosphere was tense that day, more than any day since Otabek had joined the band, because that was the only conceivable reason for Seung Gil’s retort. Seung Gil, whose quiet force had for so long hidden his sick skills with the bass, who had never spoken unnecessarily, who had considered any uninvited conversation with JJ a practical waste of time. Seunggil, who was unnerved enough to uncharacteristically burst out to silence JJ. 

The thing was—Perodixical was used to treating Japan as their home base. It was their phenomenally sold-out concert in Japan that had forced the rest of the world, even Canada and the United States, to finally pay attention to them. Perodixical, the all-Asian band who had struggled to overcome that racial ceiling in the Western world had managed to find a footing in the Japan, catapulting them into some sort of a cult rising star. 

Otabek only knew vague details—he had only joined them about a few months before that gig, so he could hardly relate to the paralysing anxiety that was consuming the rest of the band. He took the liberty to excuse himself from the dressing room the organisers had prepared for them, hoping that they would ease up by the time he returned. 

On his way to the backstage exit, he passed the room which hosting the “famous pianist” that JJ was agonising about. 

_Viktor Nikiforov_ , the label wrote in both Japanese katakana and Roman alphabets and below, a four-lettered Japanese name he couldn’t recognise. What a name, he had thought to himself. The door was slightly open, allowing him a tiny glimpse of someone tall and thin dressed in silver. Before he could make out the face, someone had bumped into him, a bespectacled staff who was pulling him away as fast as she could. 

“There’s been a change, Mr Altin, Nozarashi34’s slot got shortened, so Peroxidical is up in less than 10 minutes, thank goodness I found you,” she muttered in very rectangular-sounding English (at least, in Otabek’s mind, the general way the Japanese speaks English has a boxy feel to it, with hard edges and rigid enunciations). 

From a distance, he saw a streak of pale blonde hair and thought it looked really _natural_. He couldn’t tell exactly why his mind had chosen that word, but natural had felt like an accurate depiction of the difference between that and the many bleached hairs backstage. A few hours later, he would know that it belonged to Yuri Plisetsky, a Russian who, genetically speaking, had a higher percentage of being able to grow _naturally_ yellow hairs. He apparently wasn’t even a performer in the festival. 

But in the moment leading to that, Perodixical had only gotten their nerves escalated as a result of an earlier schedule and yet performing spectacularly against all odds—JJ’s confidence had returned to its original form, owing to his fans in the front row—and claiming many more fans who were only listening to them for the very first time that day. 

When all the performers had bowed out of the stage after the final song of the night, JJ decided to introduce himself to the man who had terrified him senseless just a few hours before. This time, Otabek managed to take a good look of Viktor Nikiforov’s face and true to his reputation, he was absolutely _gorgeous_. 

That wasn’t the biggest moment for Otabek that night. 

Viktor Nikiforov introduced his protege to Perodixical, the blonde Russian Otabek had spotted a few hours ago. JJ had taken an immediate, but almost JJ-esque condescending way, liking to him, fawning endlessly about how pretty he had looked. How he almost stole the limelight from Viktor because oh, he was just so pretty. You Russians and your natural disposition for hitting the genetic lottery, JJ was musing. 

Otabek didn’t get to even introduce himself. He didn’t even get to look at Yuri and say hello, you must be the one behind the curtains before we got up. In all the crazy things that would happen for many years later, it was crazy that they almost didn’t get to meet that day. 

If his ex-girlfriend had never mentioned about this ambitious, all-Asian rock band that this former Canadian ice skater is fronting. If he had never thought about auditioning, if he had given a second thought about travelling at a moment’s notice, if he had chosen to stay inside while JJ ranted his insecurity—

So many decisions made to lead up to this, and Otabek always thought that it was really crazy how a little thing could have changed the course of his life to a completely direction, and he might have never met Yuri Plisetsky. 

 

 

 

He first kissed a girl on sixth grade, then his best friend as a high school freshman, and that was how he knew that he liked boys. 

Her name was Sophie and she was this pretty white girl from Brooklyn whose parents were both accountants. They knew each other since they sat next to each other in Algebra and she had mistakenly thought that Otabek would be good at Maths. 

“I’m not,” he insisted many times over. 

“I don’t care,” she stubbornly scoffed every single time. 

Naturally, they both failed their quizzes miserably. Sophie stopped talking to Otabek for a good few months. 

It was during the school dance event when Sophie started paying attention to him again, because apparently someone had told her that Otabek played guitar. 

“A lot of people played guitar,” Otabek said. 

“Whatever,” she said, “I need a date and you’re cool enough.” Her tone was dismissive, but for a middle schooler, the adjective _cool enough_ being used to describe you by the most popular girl in school was nothing small. 

Their first kiss was the most superficial thing Otabek has ever done. Their lips barely touched, their eyes averted from each other. It was the most meaningless thing ever, and at that time, Otabek couldn’t think of any reason why his friends were all so eager to kiss Sophie that they made bets behind his back. Steve betted 10 dollars that Sophie would dump Otabek for the most popular senior, Matt. Jack put 25 dollars on the table and said that Sophie would throw a massive tantrum. Hudson gambled away all his hair that Sophie wouldn’t even look at Otabek. 

Hudson would later stay bald until he started high school because not only would Sophie kiss Otabek that night at the dance event, they were on and off for a few years until Otabek eventually broke it to her that no, he had never liked her that way. 

*

His best friend throughout his middle school was this amazing basketball player named Ezra, whose mother was a second-generation Korean and a fiercely staunch Catholic. She often invited Otabek for Sunday church and offered to teach him piano so that he could start playing for the church choir. Otabek didn’t have to turn her down, Ezra would tell his mother that they really desperately needed to go to the park and practise shooting because Otabek really needed to perfect his free throws in order to make it into the school team. 

Otabek didn’t like basketball, but he liked Ezra. He was one of the first kids in school who made Otabek felt like he wasn’t alone, because kids with names like “Otabek” were supposed to be have parents who spoke strange English and observed strange traditions. 

“I get it though. But you know, you’re not an alien,” Ezra used to say, “you’re just Asian. They only bullied you because they were too scared of me.”

Ezra’s father was the head of the school governing body. 

In time, Otabek began to realise that he didn’t just “like” Ezra—he was actually _attracted_ to him. They had their first kiss together on the first week of high school when they were both invited to the orientation and one of the seniors dared Ezra to have a huge glass of whiskey and make out with one of the guys. One of the seniors was the MVP of the high school basketball team whom Ezra was really eager to make good first impression to, so he gulped it in one go and abruptly kissed Otabek hard. 

Ezra’s kiss was desperate, very much unlike Sophie’s light, flirtatious ones. He put a lot into his motions and body movement, and it convinced Otabek that he had found something.

Much later, Ezra would tell him that the kiss that night was genuine, and that he had been in love with Otabek for as long as he could remember before it happened—and Otabek would thank him because that kiss made him realise that he really was gay and yet, despite spending all those years wondering if Erza would like him back, not that really into him after all. 

Sophie and Ezra were both unforgettable parts of his life—Sophie was The One whom I Never Wanted to Kiss and Ezra was The One whom I Never Really Loved, but they were not Yuri Plisetsky. 

*

A few months ago, Otabek received a Facebook wedding invitation from Sophie. She was to marry a black music producer from Los Angeles, who was Ezra’s roommate in college. Randy was the one who introduced him to this guy in Canada who was looking for a drummer for his band. 

Ezra didn’t start dating until his NBA career took off and it was only after his mother passed away from cancer that he introduced Hudson as his boyfriend to his father, who apparently barely reacted. 

Otabek didn’t believe in fate, but he had always believed in the many ways the universe had brought him to Yuri. 

 

 

 

Yuri Plisetsky was, first and foremost, one hell of a graceful dancer. Even before he got to see him dance, Otabek could tell, because Yuri’s brand of grace was in the way his reflexes responded to the unregulated stimuli. It reminded him of the perpetual swaying of the street dancers in Los Angeles, the stretching of ballet dancers—it was like grace was an insuppressible inborn quality. 

It was also in the way Yuri’s voice and fingers presented their songs, the effortless entrance of his vocals and blending into the instrumentals of the piano, going along with the keys and vibrations. If music existed in human form, Otabek thought, Yuri might be it. 

Viktor’s partner, Katsuki Yuuri once described Yuri as a person who was born for the stage, but even that sold him short. The longer Otabek watched him, the more he felt as though Yuri could light the stage with his presence alone—the lights and the elevated platform only served to complete him. 

More than once, Otabek couldn’t be more aware of the contrast between them, because even their joined moments were made to draw his attention to the visceral differences between them; Yuri’s body a calculated calibration for the equilibrium of might and grace, while his own was but an unrefined mass, a rough combination of brute strength and durability. It was probably the closest to a spiritual experience as far as he could tell, because the sheer improbability of it still astounded him, along with the fact that he was actually touching the very body that was made out of his ideal. 

So he always took his time savouring his moments with Yuri, dragging their kisses for as long as he could. Yuri didn’t always like it, because he was afraid of the long-drawn intimacy. 

So afraid that he would sometimes retreat, holding Otabek’s hands instead of his body as though he was saying _please give me space_. 

When Otabek asked if he was suffocating him, taking too much at one go, Yuri would hold a bit tighter and shake his head lightly. No, Beka. You’re great. 

I want this, I like that we are breathing the same air. I like that I can-

Can what? Otabek would prod. Tell me, he thought. 

Yuri raised his head but eyes remained casted downwards, looking like the most beautiful thing ever. 

I like that I can taste you.

Otabek nudged him, closing the distance between them and started falling for the colours emanated from this boy at his prime, at his most loved, hoping that he wouldn’t regret giving him the best part of his youth. 

 

 

 

To the surprise of the entire Perodixical, Phichit was the one who actually managed to land them a more permanent series of gigs in Japan. The people there really loves them, Phichit said, according to him, Viktor Nikiforov was interested in getting them in for a joint tour. 

“I don’t understand,” Seung Gil said, “our styles are so different.”

Seung Gil was actually right. Viktor’s band, Double L, was a lot of instrumental harmony, a lot of fantastical journey to an imaginary, peaceful past while Perodixical was a lot self-aggrandising present day manic. There was no reason to have a joint tour other than the fact that Phichit managed to strike an uncanny friendship with Viktor’s partner, Katsuki Yuuri, who played the flute. 

But the joint tour still happened, despite the musical odds, the initial apprehensions, despite the logistic complications and that was the beginning of the most indiscernible decision Otabek has made in his life. 

And now, ten years after he returned to the States, thirteen years after he decided that there was something in Tokyo that was worth more than being in Peroxidical, fifteen years after he first auditioned to be the drummer in an up-and-coming band, Otabek could safely give an answer to a question that Yuri once asked him. 

Yuri, who, ten years after, still retains his leanness even if his face has been toughened by age. Who, ten years after, even with shorter hair and sharper-angled jaw, is still the most phenomenally striking beauty that he ever had laid his eyes on. 

“I never regretted being with you,” he says. 

 

 

 

Yuri once asked him if he remembered anything about Kazakhstan and Otabek struggled to recall an image. He explained that he had moved to the United States before he could barely remember anything, so the only things he knew about Kazakhstan were the pictures from Internet and the meat dumplings that his mother made. But he could recall the sounds of his motherland, if there was such a thing, and proceeded to play a fingerstyle version of folk song he often heard his mother singing during his childhood. 

What about New York, Yuri asked. Los Angeles? 

I can’t play the sound of the subway train on guitar, he told Yuri. Yuri was so amused that he was literally rolling on the floor laughing, but Otabek was fully serious about it. 

Kazakhstan was so far detached from his personal history that he felt as though it was a myth, and as myths were wont to be, the best representation are songs and stories. Of warriors and tribal wars, devils and djinns, the Mongolians and the Russians. It’s what you do with myths, he said, create a world far richer than it actually is. That was why he couldn’t tell what had happened when the Soviet fell and Kazakhstan had to rise from the ashes of the fallen Union, but he could sing about the land his people inhabited before time fell on it. 

New York was, in many ways, a dastard resistance. Los Angeles, though, less so. He had only been to Chicago once when he was younger, and Rhode Island for a trip with Ezra, and they gave him a different variation of modern reality. The kind that acknowledged that he was different and identified him by it, the kind that encouraged mobility, the kind that hosted an entire spectrum of species. 

Subway trains, he repeated. That’s what America sounds like. 

What about Japan? What does it sound like? 

It was one of those times when Yuri asked questions with a specific intention, because he was circling his arms around Otabek’s waist from the back and breathing into his nape. It was his love language, wanting to know seemingly useless things because it was what painfully creative people do. 

For people like Yuri, every single thing mattered, so Otabek squeezed his hands and pulled him in to close the gap between them. 

Japan sounds like your voice. You got me here, remember? 

You sound like you want me to take responsibility, Yuri complained. 

No, Otabek thought. I’m saying that you’ve taken a part of me and part of you would always define me. 

Sentimentality had never been Otabek’s strong point, so he let out a small chuckle and let Yuri fall asleep behind him. 

 

 

 

A few months into the joint tour that Perodixical had with Double L, Viktor made an official announcement about Yuri being an official backup singer for Double L. It puzzled the entire touring team because nobody knew that Yuri _wasn’t_ a member of Double L. 

“I rejected your offer, so leave me alone,” Yuri had retorted. 

“I can do that, but you followed us here, remember?” Viktor had said with a smile that did nothing to conceal his impatience. “So you gotta help us.”

Yuri’s mood was sour for the rest of that day. In the Peroxidical section of the tour bus, Phichit provided his educated speculations of Yuri’s role in Double L, something he had been doing ever since they started the tour. His best guess after a few days of snooping around was that Yuri and Viktor were related—don’t you think they look rather alike? Viktor said Yuri was his protege, but Yuri doesn’t even play piano? Strange, don’t you think? he justified—but this was quickly debunked after Yuuri denied. They don’t even come from the same place in Russia, Yuuri was laughing. Phichit hid himself from Yuri and Viktor after realising that he might have made some rather racist conclusion. 

This time though, Phichit’s guess was so wild that Otabek almost wanted to immediately brush him off. I’m not making this lightly, you know, he insisted. Did you guys realise that he only smiled when Viktor isn’t around? Did you guys notice the way he seemed a bit over-the-top in his aggression towards Yuuri? Did you guys notice how he didn’t bother paying attention to JJ but would always react to Yuuri? 

Phichit didn’t have to finish to make Otabek’s insides squirm a little, for reasons he didn’t really know at that time. Nevertheless, Phichit did make him more acutely aware of Yuri’s quirks, down to the body language that he displayed in Yuuri’s presence. Before long, the differences were as clear as sky, so obvious that Otabek wondered why it had taken him so long to see. 

Yuri was trying his best to get Yuuri to notice him, and Otabek could only imagine the complicated that effort had been, given that Viktor and Yuuri could hardly spend a minute away from each other. 

 

 

 

It has been ten years, Yuri said, of course you would be lost. 

Otabek gave up after ten detours of Shinjuku because Google Map has failed him. He resorted to texting Yuri and telling him that yes, he’s now in Japan, right here in Shinjuku, and is very lost right now, so would you mind coming to pick me up? I’ll send you the location. 

Turned out that he wasn’t very far away from the studio, but Yuri didn’t blame him anyway. The new shops are confusing our studio members, the new ones always have to be escorted, he explains. 

They are in a family restaurant, catching up on old times over a bowl of katsudon for each of them. 

“How long do you plan to stay?” 

“Not for long, but I haven’t gotten a ticket home.”

“Still in Los Angeles?”

“Yeah.”

“What brought you here? You should have told!”

“I thought I wanted to surprise you,” Otabek says, almost flushing from embarrassment over the disastrous failure that was the “surprise”. He’s glad that they kept in constant contact, at least their conversation is a continuation, saving them both from the awkwardness of distance. 

More than anything, he was glad, really really glad that they could still have a normal conversation in person. 

 

 

 

He didn’t want to keep secrets, so when Yuri said that yes, he would very much like to kiss Otabek like all lovers do, cuddle at night and maybe, one of these days, have sex, Otabek told him about Sophie and Ezra and let Yuri interrogate him. 

Did you kiss them? Yes. 

Did you have sex with them? Yes. 

Did you often have sex with them? No. 

Did you like it better with Ezra? Yes. 

Really? 

Yes. 

So you like guys? 

Yes. 

But you’ve been with a girl. 

Yes. 

But you like guys. 

Yes. 

It took Yuri quite a bit to finish with his questions and when he was done, Otabek cupped his face to tease him, thinking that if Yuri needed a bit more convincing, this courtship between them didn’t have to end. 

Much later, Yuri confessed that it wasn’t the fact that Otabek had been experimenting sexually that bothered him, not at all. Because he got to know that it was really Yuri the man that he wanted, instead of Yuri the pretty face. Because he also got to know that Otabek was honest to a fault and Yuri could only like him more. Because he also got to know that Otabek really was serious about him, baring his past to him like that. 

But it was the differences in life experience that got him, because try as they might be, they weren’t really equals. Otabek was far ahead, so much ahead that Yuri had been catching his breath trying to catch up, trying to match up to him, everything sounded a bit ridiculous when he tried saying it out because it was such a silly thing—and then Otabek pressed his lips against Yuri’s and Yuri kissed back clumsily, then muttered something about being pathetic. 

Look at me, Beka, that was my first, did you know? I don’t even know if I actually like guys!

Yes, it doesn’t bother me. 

But I want to. 

What? 

I want to like guys. I want to like _you_. 

Do you want to kiss again?

I want you to like it. I want to drive you mad. 

I already like it. 

Thinking back, this exchange was how they really started, how he really knew that Yuri was going to be the last person he wanted to love. Something about that moment, the heavy thumping of his chest when they locked their bodies together told him that things wouldn’t be easy. Something about the way Yuri had nuzzled him that made him want to treasure this thing between them, because there wouldn’t be another thing like this. Something about their next kiss told him that he had been waiting for this moment forever. 

Are you going to try driving me crazy or not? 

What kind of question is that? 

Because I want to tell you that we can keep doing this until you fall for me. 

For real. 

 

 

 

It wasn’t easy convincing Peroxidical that Leopard Rain’s hiatus wasn’t because they weren’t selling. 

“We are not something you can fall back on when your booty call is over, you know?” JJ chided. “It’s all fine and dandy until someone backed out. It’s business, baby.”

Otabek was ready to walk away right there and then—he didn’t even know why he bothered asking JJ, because really, he didn’t have an explanation to offer. JJ was right to be angry, because after all, he was the one who left them after their joint tour was over. He was the one who stayed behind in Japan while the rest of Peroxidical headed back to LA to work on a new album. He was the one who made the rash decision to make a band with Yuri, named it Leopard Rain and spent a few years trying to make it work. 

The thing was, they were selling out venues. Yuri being the frontman was all the advantage that they need to throttle the other up-and-coming bands. Otabek’s songs suited Yuri, and together, they recruited really talented people, really compatible musicians.

It wasn’t easy telling JJ that the thing between him and Yuri was the very thing that tore Leopard Rain. 

 

 

 

Yuri Plisetsky’s life story was something made of soap operas. His mother had a short-lived popstar career in Russia, he never knew who his father was. When his grandfather passed away when he was 15, he decided to relocate to Japan and study contemporary dance under Yakov, himself a formerly established dancer in his youth. 

Otabek could only complete the rest based on what he knew: 

Some time during his late teens, Yuri met Katsuki Yuuri, had a crush on him, but had his heart broken because Katsuki Yuuri was in love with Viktor Nikiforov and after they got together, Yuri found Otabek while being an tour assistant. Yuri and Otabek became fast friends and Otabek decided to stay in Japan to help Yuri start a band. 

But things quickly fell apart because he fell in love, and fell so deep that he felt trapped in his feelings and lost his voice way too soon. 

At least was what the public was told. 

The truth wasn’t that Yuri started losing his voice, but it was because he started gradually losing his will to sing. 

You don’t understand, Otabek, he said, over and over again. 

 

 

 

We shouldn’t have started the band, come to think of it—they had had multiple variations of this conversation in the past, and yet they would still return to this topic, because there never was a resolution, because they fell apart faster than they took to fall for each other. 

Because even after ten years, they are still unconsciously evading it, the thing that couldn’t bring them together didn’t even tear them apart cleanly. 

Yuri stopped talking after Otabek told him that he had never regretted what had happened between them, until they reached the station and Otabek finds Yuri pulling his sleeve and he’s transported back to that time ten years ago when Yuri gave them most powerful confession he had ever heard, that he wanted it all, that he wanted to fall in love with him. 

Above everything, he wanted to make Otabek feel what he was feeling, just as helpless as he was, just as trapped that he was. 

Otabek had spent the last ten years convincing himself that what they had wasn’t love. They were crazy for each other but what went on between them was an obsession. Those nights spent cuddling, it was them two lonely people who badly needed comfort because their emptiness needed company. Those nights spent kissing, it was Otabek entertaining his delusions and Yuri attending to his sexual curiosity. Those nights they spent touching each other, relieving each other’s erection, it was them being infatuated with each other. 

A long time ago, on the day he packed his bags and left Japan, he decided that it wasn’t love, because Otabek stole the sound out of Yuri’s existence and kept it for himself and Yuri’s heart was left barren. 

And yet, he can’t help himself from falling back into the similar trap, one that had burned them both so badly in the past. 

He lets Yuri kiss him as the train pass them by. 

 

 

 

Rumour has it that the singer Ekaterina Plisetskaya was born with the power to steal lights from eyes, not unlike the brutally bright colours of her homeland, Moscow. With her pixie-like face and a bewitching voice, she became a legend in her own rights in no time at all. However, all good times must come to a pass and eventually Ekaterina’s colours couldn’t sustain the increasingly damaged soul behind her smiles. The magic eventually faded when she fell in love with an older man, and in her escape from the life that had trapped her, she reclaimed it back by having a son and have him carry the name of her own father. In a begrudgingly brokered deal with the entertainment journalist that caught sight of the little boy, she managed to hide him away with her father, a retired soldier who lived in the outskirt of Moscow, as far from the stage as possible. Ekaterina herself later drained all her colours and vanished, leaving only a tiny flicker of her magic behind before eventually replaced by newer, shinier songstresses. 

Yuri used to hate the romanticised version of her mother’s life story, but now he knew why it had to be told that way. The human brain has a way of fogging up memories and decorating it with pretty things, because people are just essentially creatures with an incorrigible fondness of nostalgia-tainted aesthetics. 

He noticed it in his mother a lot, the way she yearned for her past glory. It’s in the way she danced in her studio when nobody’s watching, the way her new compositions hardly had climaxes, the way she had always refused to watch Yuri’s performances. It isn’t because she doesn’t love him, she always insisted, but a person who ached for the stage like she did should never be allowed near it. 

His mother had always been oddly self-depreciative, Yuri noticed. It made him long for his departed grandfather. Sometimes he wondered if it was genetically possible for a hard-faced, sturdy person like his grandfather to have a delicate daughter like his mother. Perhaps the science of genetics is in who he doesn’t know—and in that case, Yuri would never know anymore that what he had known now. Ekaterina Plisetskaya made a vow to never reveal who her son’s father is. 

“He’s still the love of my life,” she had said, “and that’s all you need to know.”

Perhaps that was the reason why Yuri, in return, made a similar vow. Like his mother did, he’ll hide the products of his own love story and allow the tales be filtered by tints of nostalgia. 

It might be cold, but it’s the only kind of love he knows his mother would definitely appreciate. 

 

 

 

Winter wasn’t the kind of season to have unexpected changes, so when the studio decided to switch to the EDM track just commissioned by the sponsor, Yuri almost quit in a fit of rage. But he still stormed out ahead of time, leaving the rest of the crew stunned for words. 

Good, he thought as he raced to the gym, that would teach them. Nobody pointed a gun to their heads and asked them to change the song. 

When he was years younger, the voices in his head would stop there to allow his rage simmer into pure hatred, but he was now an adult and therefore, another voice came in just in time to sterilise it. 

It wasn’t really about the changes, it said. It was about the song. You know it very well. 

It was really because they no longer wanted to use the track that Otabek had written for you. 

“God damn it,” he muttered to himself before hitting the sandbag for one last time that night. 

He missed Otabek. After going back to the United States, Otabek had been consistently working to produce songs for independent artists before returning back to Peroxidical. The band were already in a pretty good position on the Billboard charts, but Otabek’s exposure from his time in Japan had clearly benefitted them, as the band later gained more momentum from their evolved style, which was much better received. 

Yuri knew that he should be happy for him, but some parts of him used to yearn for some sort of zealous longing before reminding himself that he brought this upon himself, so he really didn’t have the rights to want anything more from Otabek. 

Especially after everything he had given him. 

He who was the first person who willingly came to him and stayed, the first person to have really looked at him, understood him and yet accepted him for what he is, the one who had loved him and would have waited for him to love him back. 

The one who had been willing to find a home in him—only for him to present him shrapnels of his shattered self, pleading for him to find a way to put him back together. 

He no longer had recollections about his sudden breakdown, only the gradual disintegration of his muses. He should have been able to tell from the symptoms: first there was the aversion for crowds—no, he remembered yelling inside, don’t come to me, don’t talk to me, don’t. Then there was the disjoined words and notes—I can’t write this, he had angrily burned the papers, I can’t get anything done. Finally there was the nauseating fear of lights. He was his mother all over again, only with him, there was Otabek behind him for every reclining motion. 

Are you ok, he used to ask, stroking his head gently. 

Do you think I’m ok? 

Yes, because you’re strong. 

Whenever Otabek answered him with such an affirmation, Yuri felt like biting something. If only he was a little more hesitant, a little less decisive, he could at least manipulate that lapse of judgement. Answers like that, _yes, Yuri, you’re strong_ would only make him look foolish in return. 

Beka, what if I say I’m not ok? 

Are you really? 

And if I say yes? 

Tell me what I can do. 

He wanted to ask to be touched, because in times like this intimacy would break him, and if he was broken enough, Otabek would finally see that he wasn’t ok. Stop having faith in me, stop idealising me, I’m not perfect. 

But Otabek would kiss him like he was the most wondrous thing to have happened to him, the most treasured, most beloved, and if there was one thing that would make him feel the worst he could humanly be is to be loved like that, because he would only want to lock this feeling, hide Otabek away and crush him underfoot if he could. 

He would bury his thoughts, destroy his voice, vanquish his own colours. 

Being with me sucks right? 

Yuri would ask him a million times, yet Otabek had never answered. 

That was a few years ago, way before he knew that falling in love could be such a pain, but if he could have a redo, he would take Otabek back, he would fall for him again and again. 

I’ll be ok, Beka. I’ll take your love, I’ll be your ideal, I’ll take all the consequences of falling for you.   
*


End file.
